- Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My guest today is Sam from Financial Samurai. And Sam, primarily we're gonna talk today about your book.

I wanna dig into it, as I think this is such a valuable topic. Your book is called How to Engineer Your Layoff, Negotiate a Severance and Be Free. But before we get to that, you have an interesting financial independence and financial freedom story of your own, which in my opinion, very much fits the tagline of this show.

I'd love for you to share a little bit about your career history and how you moved from the place of an employee through the ranks and ultimately wound up becoming financially independent to set the context for our conversation today. - Sure, well, thanks for having me on the show.

It's good to be here. Financial Samurai started in 2009 during the depths of the financial crisis. I was actually working in the financial services industry. And basically I was losing all my money. I thought I did everything right. I had a diversified net worth. But my net worth was getting pounded, just like everybody else, by probably around 35% in a matter of 12 months, really, during the depth of the crisis.

So I started Financial Samurai just to try to make sense of all the chaos. My career started in 1999. I graduated from college then. I joined an investment bank in New York City. And I was in the equities department, which is basically sales and trading, stocks, all that good stuff.

And I knew from the very first month of work when I had to get in by 5.30 a.m. And I'd have to leave probably around 7.30, 8 p.m. 'cause I had to deal with the international markets that I don't think I would've been able to last very long. So I was like, well, there's no way after one month of doing this where I'm gonna survive for probably more than five to 10 years.

So I better save my money aggressively now. So it was pretty interesting. It was ironic because I think that a lot of people, if they have a nice job, cushy, nine to five, not a lot of stress, not a lot of demands from clients and all that pressure, I think the desire for financial independence early is not really there.

But if you just get pounded and beat by a stick every single morning from very, very intense people, you wanna get the hell out as soon as possible. So that was my thought from the very first month of work. I had to get out, so I saved as much as I could, like at least 50% of my income.

I lived in a studio with a buddy of mine for two years. And just to try to save, save, save. And I would actually kind of welcome the seven o'clock time period because I could get some free dinner at my company. (laughing) - Did you find that others of your compatriots, new entrants into the investment banking world, were following a similar path and saving a lot of money?

Or did you find that they were a little bit more liberal with their spending? - I think a lot of people would go out in New York City, you'd go to the clubs, you'd go spend on drinks, food. There's an endless amount of things to spend money on in Manhattan.

It's just an amazing place with a lot of, I don't think you can ever feel too rich in New York City, let's just put it that way. So I think a lot of people did enjoy, once you get a paycheck, you wanna blow it on and stuff. But I just didn't take that route.

I mean, my parents were always pretty frugal. Really middle class citizens. We lived in a townhouse when I was in high school. I went to a public high school and a public college because I was pretty aware that I didn't wanna burden my parents and frankly myself on paying private school tuition.

And I knew that, so I went to the College of William and Mary in Virginia and the tuition there was about $2,800 a year. And contrary to the tuition my parents paid for my sister, that was about $20,000 a year. And so I knew that worst case, if I'd gone to a public school, if I ended up without a job, with nothing, I could just go back and work at McDonald's and pay my parents back 2,800 bucks.

So I really had this kind of frugal mindset and hyper-awareness of our financial situation since I was probably 13, 14. - In working in stressful industries like you're describing, especially investment banking, I think it's great that it pushed you in that direction, but I don't know how we would confirm whether it does that for other people or not.

It seems to me like it could have that benefit. It could be a blessing in disguise and demonstrate to you, hey, I don't wanna do this, so I need to plan to get out. But generally, the mindset that I've observed around investment banking, people who go into it are focused on the million, two million, three million plus a year payday at the end, once they get established, once they do a couple of big deals.

And so they're looking at the grunt work as just simply the price of tuition to where they can get into the position of earning the big money. And oftentimes, people who are motivated by earning the big money, seems to me like they're motivated by earning the big money to sell and, excuse me, to spend and live that million bucks a year lifestyle.

And so they can easily get sucked into the world of putting all of their money into appearances in the early days to meet that. I didn't work in investment banking, but I also worked in financial services, but on the retail side, working as a retail financial advisor. And I always felt that pressure where it was hard.

Similar, I worked similar work schedule to yours in terms of a 12 to 16 hour day was not uncommon. And although it was in a different context, one of the temptations I often felt was, well, I'll always make more money in the future. This is a highly lucrative business, so everything's gonna work out fine.

It's okay to just go ahead and spend now. And by the way, if I spend now and buy a fancy car and wear fancy clothes and engage in fancy activities, I'm paving the path to where I need to be so that I can make the big money in the future.

I'll fit in at the country club, I'll be able to integrate with all of these rich people. And so my guess would be that that temptation is there in investment banking as well. - I think there's a perception issue with Wall Street and Main Street. One of the perceptions is that I think everybody is making the million to $3 million.

And that's just not true. Maybe only the managing directors will start making a million dollars. And to get to managing director, I would think the median time frame to get there is 10 years of service at least. Or maybe not, maybe that's the median, 10 to 15 years of service, whether out of undergrad or business school.

And I would say maybe half a percent of the people actually get to that level. So just to clarify, not everybody's making the million bucks. I mean, people will start off with pretty good salaries, but they're much less. In terms of the temptation, I definitely saw a lot of wealthy people.

My firm, we went public in 1999, and suddenly a lot of the managing directors there were worth multi-millions of dollars. But I think what happened was I saw the people around me with a lot of money, and I didn't see them to be any happier. I just felt that they had put in their dues.

They were much older, they were in their 40s and 50s, and they were wealthier, so that made a lot of sense. So the culture of the firm really instilled in us to pay our dues, to not expect to go straight to the corner office once we get in, but to say, look, there is a really strong meritocracy, and so if you do work hard, you do kill yourself for 15 hours a day, you do build a proper support network, you too might be able to ascend.

So it was like always a decision. Oh, it's there for me, which is I think all anybody really wants, to be able to have a strong correlation with effort and performance and reward. But I don't know, I didn't see people as much happier, and I enjoyed when someone invited me to a party, or went for a ride, or whatever, that was nice.

But I don't know, it was just never in me that I had to make the megabucks to live the high lifestyle. I think I would rather have just been happy being a fitter person with good health and having a lot more freedom. - So continue please to paint the arc of your career for us.

- So '99 to 2001, New York City, the dot-com bubble started to collapse in 2000. And in 2001, I knew, I don't think I would have been able to survive at my firm, and a headhunter called one of my VPs, and she said, oh, I'm not interested in moving, but maybe you wanna talk to Sam.

So I was like, okay, I'll talk. And so it was a competing firm in San Francisco, doing the same thing, Asian equities, which was pretty cool because the Asian markets are really growing by leaps and bounds, especially China in the early 2000s. And so I talked to the headhunter, and I said, hey, you know what?

I don't think I'm gonna be able to survive at my firm in New York City. The layoffs are coming, I just took a chance, I took a leap of faith to go to San Francisco where I knew nobody, and to try to do something new. And so I never thought I would last in the investment banking arena for as long as I did, but being able to move to San Francisco, be with new people, have a different type of lifestyle, and work at a different firm really invigorated my desire and my career in finance.

So I lasted until 2012, in which I ultimately engineered my layoff to do something else. - And since that time, you've essentially considered yourself to be financially independent. I know you've done some work and have pursued various sources of income, but when you engineered your layoff in 2012, did you feel like at that point in time you had reached financial independence?

- Yes, I did. 2012, let's see, four and a half years ago, I was, yeah, 34 and a half. And what happened was I had been starting to build passive income and saving, investing since about 2000, like January 2000, when I first got my stub bonus from four months of work in 1999, because I wanted to get out.

I knew I needed to have the optionality to get out because I just didn't think I would last. My parents lasted for multiple decades, and traditionally retired in their 60s. I just didn't think I could last, and I didn't know what else I could do. So by 2012, I had developed a passive income stream of about $80,000.

And I knew that about 80,000, this was gross, was good enough to not starve in San Francisco. San Francisco's obviously a really expensive place to live, but I had locked down my mortgage, and I had been tracking about anywhere from 70 to $80,000 a year gross income and spending anyway.

So I felt, you know what, $80,000 was enough of a passive income stream where I felt it would cover all my expenses and maintain the lifestyle I had in San Francisco. Meanwhile, I had started my site, Financial Samurai, in 2009 and it started making a little bit of money here and there, which I never collected.

It was just siphoned off and given to someone else because I didn't want to have any conflicts of interest. So I knew with Financial Samurai and the $80,000 passive income, I would survive. So but my biggest fear of leaving was, well there's two things. One was giving up my deferred compensation in terms of cash and stock, which was gonna get paid out over a three year time period.

And there was also some partner investments that were made during the financial crisis, which we paid out in 2017, believe it or not. And then my other main fear was that if I left, I'd look like an idiot, and people would think I'd just be totally stupid to throw away a 13 year career making what I was making.

And that I would fail because there would be no correlation with the effort I put into Financial Samurai and the reward. That was my, frankly my biggest fear, that I would try and nothing would happen. - Right, right. Now, two things that I want to emphasize as we get to the layoff process, is first in what you just sketched out.

You and your story is an example of one of the themes that I discuss on Radical Personal Finance, that it is possible in a decade or so, to build a plan for financial independence. And as you described that if you began building passive income in 2001, and you entered into the workforce in 1999, you saved and worked towards that end.

And in 2012, you considered yourself to be financially independent with an $80,000 a year passive income stream. So that's about a decade and a half. And so it is possible to do. And since then you've gone on to build more. And there was no magic secret to it. You saved aggressively, you made wise investments, and you worked hard and built your career.

So I think it's a great, it's an important story for people to recognize that it is possible. Before I go on to the second point, have you had people, I mean, do you feel like you've gotten that message out there in the things that you've written to demonstrate that yes, you can with a career, with frugality?

I mean, you were riding a bus to work, even though you're working as a high dollar investment as an employee in the financial services industry. Have you gotten that message out there enough, do you feel? - I think so. I started tracking my passive income progress, and I would do it once a year.

And I think through tracking the progress, and just telling my mistakes and my wins, people just kind of got the message, oh, it can be done, but it's not an easy and quick path. So if I started in January 2000, and I finally left in 2012 to get $80,000 in passive income, that's 12 years to get to 80,000.

I saved 100% on all my bonuses, and then I saved even more, I maxed out my 401k, I lived in a studio, and then I lived in this really crappy two bedroom, one bath apartment at the edge of Chinatown. You know, there were sacrifices to be made. And then I went to business school part-time to try to accelerate my career as well, during the 60 to 70 hour work week grind.

The thing that people need to realize is that 10, 15 years ago, everybody could easily get around a 4% risk-free rate of return, either through the 10 year bond yield or a CD. But now, interest rates, the 10 year bond yield has gone down to under 2%. So it actually takes even more effort to generate that passive income.

So throughout the years, I talk about this, and I think people really kind of get the math behind it, the economics and the importance of looking at different types of investments to boost that income in a risk-adjusted manner. - One thing I've appreciated over the years, because of your background in the investment markets and the financial services industry, your website features a level of sophistication when discussing markets, market sectors, appropriate diversification of a portfolio that's often lacking in personal finance websites.

You don't just give the approach, put it all in an index fund, it's gonna be okay. You look at CD rates, you keep cash on the side, you discuss what the risk-free rate is, you discuss how various things are affecting, you discuss your portfolio where you're shooting for big wins, but you also discuss the conservative base and I really appreciate that about your writing.

I wanna talk about layoffs now. And the first thing that I wanna mention is the timing of the layoff. Now, in your story, I've picked up that you went to San Francisco because you were concerned about being laid off, but then while you were in San Francisco many years later, you engineered a layoff.

This can be a challenge because in some cases, getting laid off is a benefit. And in a moment, I want you to talk about the benefits. One of the biggest is severance, just different things. There are a lot of benefits to getting laid off, but one of the major disadvantages could be that in being laid off, you might be perceived as not a valuable employee, depending on the market, depending on the industry, and also you could be getting laid off at the wrong time in the market cycle.

In some cases, if you perceive that layoffs are coming, it's better to be an early mover and leave and go ahead and get a job while you don't have a lot of competition. So talk about even the timing and the advisability of working to engineer a layoff for yourself versus moving quickly and going ahead and quitting and moving on to something else.

- Right, so you make some good points. To be able to engineer your layoff takes a lot of self-awareness and just awareness about your surroundings. So in 2008 to 2010, it was a horrific time for I think most investors and just most Americans. There was a lot of uncertainty in their investments.

A lot of their friends were getting laid off. My firm had four to six rounds of layoff in 2008, 2009, and 2010. So someone who is self-aware recognizes there's trouble ahead. And for myself, the reason why I wanted to engineer my layoff was two things. One, the financial services industry became public enemy number one.

Even though I had nothing to do with the mortgage financial crisis, with someone not paying their mortgage or whatnot, it didn't matter. I was the bad person. And that didn't feel good. I felt I was a good person. My mom always told me I was a good person and I'm trying to help people and serve as clients.

So that was one thing. And then the second thing was there was a lack of correlation with effort and reward anymore. I had done well in my business, but I was being asked to subsidize the departments that didn't do well. And I understood that, because it's one team, one dream.

There's good and the bad, and we have to be in it together. But instead of complaining or just feeling down, I just said, you know what? That's totally fine, I get it. But I would rather not complain and I would rather work something out. So when you want to engineer your layout, you need to be serious about your desire to move on.

Okay, this is a proactive step everybody must take. This is not a reactionary, oh my gosh, come to the HR department office. Oh my gosh, I'm getting laid off. Pack your bags, see you later. No, no, no, no, no. The way I've been writing and thinking and advising people is to really be proactive in thinking ahead about what could happen.

Create some scenarios in your mind. Be very methodical and analytical about your future and about your finances. So I knew for myself that the pay was never gonna be as it was. I knew that I would continue to subsidize other departments. And I knew that I had a different interest in my life, which was writing online and building Financial Samurai.

I just loved it, whereas I no longer love the financial services industry. And so to take that step is to be aware that there are layoffs, there were layoffs, and there are layoffs to come. And one of the steps that I recommend everybody do who works in a larger company is to simply Google the WARN Act, W-A-R-N Act, because companies of larger size, generally it's 1,000 or more, will have to file with their local, with the state, to warn the state that they're gonna do mass layoffs.

And if you see your company on that list, then you know, okay, a layoff is coming. So what you wanna do is be proactive if you have decided that you wanna do something else, is to try to get on that list and be first on that layoff list, because the people first will get the most benefits and the people last will get the least.

- Obviously the advice of how to get laid off is counterintuitive. Most people are saying how not to get laid off. In fact, I've done a series of shows on how to not get fired in the coming recession. So make the case as to why I would actually want to be laid off and why I would want to be laid off in an early round if possible.

- Sure, so in the past, like perhaps our parents or our parents' parents, they would have pensions. They would work until 60, 65, and then they would get a pension for life and be set for life. So they didn't actually really have to save. Whereas now we have to save through our 401k, our IRA.

The company match average is only like 3% of your contribution or your salary. So it's really not that good. So the onus has been put on us to take care of ourselves financially. Sure, there will be Social Security. I believe at least 70% of the payout from Social Security will be available to us when we retire for those under 40, 45.

But it's not something to count on. So why do we want to engineer our layoff? There's a couple things. One, you know there's something else better you wanna do. In my case, it was I already built $80,000 in passive income over the past 12 years and I had something to do, which was write on Financial Samurai.

The other case might be you just, you hate your job and you wanna find a new job. But a lot of people will say, you know what, they think that the honorable thing to do or the easy way is to just quit or give their two weeks notice. And I think that is the absolute wrong way.

You should never quit. You should always get laid. That's the tagline. Never quit, get laid. And the other idea is, getting laid is much better than quitting. And then there's this whole other movement we hear online about people who want to travel the world and do all this kind of stuff or whatever.

That's great. But no time in our history is now have so many people been able to choose what they wanna do in their lives. Like 100, 200 years ago, people had to farm, had to do whatever. They were just stuck. So these are some reasons why you wanna engineer your layout.

And the other thing is, let's say you've been a relatively low employee, been there for five to 10 years. Let's say you work at a startup. And startups, they pay stock over time. You get vested over usually a three to four year period. If you quit, you get none of that.

If you're a long-term employee at an investment bank, for example, you have deferred cash and stock as well because nobody pays you all cash anymore. If you get laid off, here are some of the benefits. One, you might get a severance. A severance, let me be clear, is it's discretionary.

You must negotiate that severance. A lot of great firms have already a standard boilerplate severance package. Maybe it might be one to three weeks per year worked. Second benefit, you get WARN Act pay, W-A-R-N Act pay. So the law states that if you're gonna do a mass layoff, you must pay the employee either one to three months worth of pay, and then you can pay someone their severance as well.

The other benefit is you can get COBRA in healthcare for anywhere from three to six to 12 months. And it can be fully paid by your company or you just basically pay your normal premiums. And that's really important, especially for people who have a gap in what they plan to do in between their job or whatever.

The other benefit is you can get unemployment benefits. If you are laid off, you have a right to unemployment benefits. Unemployment benefits, I think in California, for example, are $900 every two weeks or $1,800 a month. And you can receive that, as you can in most states, for 26 weeks.

There's no more, I think, federal unemployment benefits as there once was during the crisis where you heard about the 99 weeks. But again, this is another nice cushion for you during your transition period. Because if anybody who's ever been laid off, fired, or quit knows the transition period between jobs is a really disconcerting and stressful time.

So the whole idea of how to engineer your layoff is to be very analytical, practical, and to build the longest financial runway possible until you discover something that you really, really wanna do. Too many people leave something and because of financial uncertainty, they panic and then they say, I'm gonna take the first thing that comes to me.

And then they go in this endless cycle of doing something they don't like to do just for money. - Tell you a quick comment on that 99 week thing. That was an incredible time. I had one client who had transferred their 401k account to my stewardship. But this client spent the entire 99 weeks traveling and just living off of the unemployment benefits.

- Oh, there you go. - Took a two year vacation on the government dime. It was remarkable to see. - But one thing people need to be aware of is that the company pays into the unemployment benefit system. So as a company owner now, I pay a percentage of my wages and someone else's wages into the unemployment system.

Therefore, people need to recognize that it's not just free money. They've actually paid into it, just like Social Security. - Right. So did we finish your list of benefits? You said big reason, severance. You can get severance, Warrant Act pay, COBRA and healthcare paid by the company, which that can be an extremely substantial benefit, especially given that those premiums that can be paid for you, you're not generally gonna be paying tax on the cost of those premiums.

And then number four would be-- - Unemployment benefits. Anything else on the reasons to consider getting laid off? - And then of course, if you have deferred cash or stock compensation or stuff like that, that gets lost 100% if you quit. But if you get laid off, think about it as an act of kindness from the company to you where they will let your unvested stock and cash vest over the schedule that if you were still employed with them.

- Now Sam, you're coming at this from the perspective of the financial industry, where you had six figure white collar salaries, you have complex deferred compensation, bonus programs, incentive programs, things like that. How applicable is this advice or approach to somebody who's more of a blue collar worker? Someone's a drywall hanger and their company construction industry starts to decline and they're gonna go in and they know that, well, the boss is gonna be laying us off because business is down.

Are these strategies applicable to that type of worker? - It is. And I start off the book by talking about relationship building, developing a high emotional quotient. Engineering your layoff is about building strong enough relationships so when the time comes, you can have an honest and frank conversation about why you wanna get laid off.

Turn it around and think about it from a manager's perspective. And I think maybe most people are non-managers, just by the numbers, but I can tell you as a manager of several people in my previous career and by speaking to other managers and leaders at a company, laying someone off is one of the most difficult things someone can do.

It doesn't even really matter if the person was a real pain in the ass while at work. To be able to tell someone to their face, I'm sorry, your services are no longer needed, is brutal. Think about breaking up with a girlfriend or a boyfriend or just telling anybody some bad news.

Telling people bad news is brutal. So one of the strategies I talk about in the book is how you wanna cultivate the relationships you have with the decision makers, with HR, and be aware that maybe the business is not doing so well or be aware that impending layoffs are coming to take the step to actually help alleviate a manager or an HR personnel's stress and fears about laying someone off by saying, "Hey, let's have a discussion "because I'm thinking about doing something else." You don't need to choose who to lay off.

I can be the one. I can save you the grief and the misery of telling someone the bad news. But let's work out a plan. Let me stay on for the next three months to help train someone to be my replacement, if that is necessary, or let me do whatever it is you want me to do so that I can get laid off with that severance, with those benefits, so I can move on.

Because no manager wants someone who doesn't wanna be there either. So it's a real win-win scenario that you can create. But a lot of people just have this tremendous fear, it's like David and Goliath, that the corporation, the manager, he or she is untouchable, they have lawyers, all that.

What people also need to realize, besides the difficulty that managers have laying people off, is that any corporation has a reputation to protect. The larger the reputation, the more at risk things are. So think about it this way. And again, you have to be aware, how much does your company make?

How many employees does it have? Where it is in the cycle? You know, there was this one article, or one New York Times expose about this disgruntled Goldman Sachs employee who said, "Why I left Goldman Sachs." And he just went straight to the New York Times to blow them up.

And that caused a tremendous amount of headache for the company, bad PR, they probably had a more difficult time hiring people, winning deals, all people were talking about was the reputation. You know, in retrospect, all the company had to do was probably say, "Here, here's half a million dollars, "or a million dollars," to save themselves a lot of heartache.

Just be aware that company reputation is everything now. Reputation is everything to individual and to a company. And if you can be more proactive and strategic in talking to your managers, and building those relationships, good things will happen. - The first thing that I think of when somebody says how to engineer your layoff without reading your book, just simply considering a question like that, would be, "Okay, I'm gonna start showing up to work late, "I'm gonna start being a jerk around the office, "I'm gonna make people not like me, "I'm gonna be flaky and not produce on my work, et cetera.

"And that way I'm gonna go ahead "and become a non-valued employee "and I'm gonna get laid off." But what you're describing, the approach you're describing is not that. It's very different. - Yeah, I mean, you can take two approaches. You can take a more honorable approach, I guess, which is the way I talk about being aware, having an open discussion about why it is you wanna move on, but creating a win-win scenario as to how you move on.

And I do talk about in the book, the strategies on creating or planting seeds of doubt in your manager's mind about whether you are the right employee to remain for the next one, two, long-term years. And so, yeah, you can definitely start showing up late. You can definitely take all your sick leave, all your vacation days, which you should, but the culture in America is that you shouldn't.

And you can do all sorts of stuff. But I really wanna emphasize that there is a better way to do it, which is to really focus on life, focus on your family, you focus on the health of your parents. One strategy a reader wrote into me, and I published a post on my site, by the name of Samurai, is using the Family and Medical Leave Act as a way to plant that seed of doubt, or to make the manager aware that, hey, you know what?

Joe or Jack or Jill has other things going on, and actually laying them off might actually be a benefit to both of us, because if they're gonna take the Family and Medical Leave Act, they're gonna be gone for three months, or whatever, maybe we can have a discussion where we just kind of lay them off so that there's no gaping hole during the three months, and we can move on and hire their replacement.

- How big of a factor do you think personal situations are versus market conditions? Let's pretend that I'm working at a job, and I recognize that I am, this job is not a good fit for me, I've got something else I wanna pursue, and thus I'd like to go ahead and leave this company, but I don't wanna just walk in and quit for the reasons that we discussed.

But I also don't see any headwinds on the horizon, our company's booming, and they're not laying people off, they're hiring. Is it possible, or do you have any ideas or strategies to engineer a layoff in that circumstance, or do we need to be facing headwinds of some kind, such that the managers and leaders of the company are considering layoffs?

- All right. This is a good question, a lot of people who are skeptical of the strategy think, "Well, why would they lay me off? "I'm such a great employee and star contributor," right? But if you're already asking how to engineer a layoff, your heart and your mind is somewhere else, you wanna do something else.

And I think most people realize a job is a job, and I would think, the surveys say more than 50%, maybe 70% of the people are not engaged at work, they wanna do something else, they're not doing what they really wanna do. So do we need headwinds? No, but headwinds help because it makes it easier, right?

There is a layoff coming, okay, good layoff. Let me participate. But any good company constantly is calling kind of the bottom five to 10%, and it's kind of like the Jack Welch at GE way. They're trying to figure out ways to always improve productivity and upgrade their employees, all that stuff.

So know that even in the most booming times, there are always people that management is looking to lay off and to upgrade. And no manager, again, wants an employee whose heart and mind is not in their jobs, especially if it's a hyper-competitive environment, like whether it's tech, internet, banking, consulting, startup, whatever, it's all focus, focus, focus, give me everything you got.

So if you don't wanna be there, they don't want you to be there. But I think the best strategy in a good environment is to really utilize personal reasons that everybody can relate to. And those personal reasons are things such as the health of your aging parents. It can be your spouse and how she gave up her career to be with you in San Francisco or New York City, but she is from Austin, Texas.

And how you wanna do the right thing and now do some sacrifice for her instead. These are the things that any manager and any person, decision maker, regarding your promotion or your layoff can empathize with because he or she also has parents, significant others, and family. And everybody knows that, I think, family's first.

So utilizing your family and other more, I think, noble reasons for why you want to move on is a great way to start the discussion. - So pretend for a moment that you were doing personal coaching of some kind. You had a friend that came to you and said, "Sam, I've got some of these personal reasons.

"My parents are aging and I feel like "I've neglected my kids. "I really would like to have a different situation. "But these circumstances are pressing in "and I can start this process. "But I don't know how long it's gonna take." If you were coaching somebody, I know that you couldn't be, I don't think you would make the claim that you could get anybody laid off.

I think this is a strategy that can work some of the time and you can work it with the hopes that it'll work. But my guess would be, feel free to disagree in a moment if you see differently. My guess would be you wouldn't make any kind of claim that this is absolutely doable by all people.

This is one of those things that you can work at and there are a lot of benefits if you can get it, but it may not work and ultimately you might have to quit. But with regard to timing, if I came to you and you were coaching me and I gave you a scenario like I just did, could you give me an idea of how long you would guess it would take or that I would need to be able to start to make progress toward my goal of getting laid off?

Is this something that I could make happen in a month, in a year, in five years? What kind of time scale are we talking about? - Yeah, so two things. Time scale and the feasibility of engineering your layoff. Let's talk about the feasibility of engineering your layoff first. People need to not be confused with the terms getting fired and getting laid off.

Getting fired is through cause, such as sexually harassing a colleague, punching your manager in the face, stealing company secrets, all that stuff. That is grounds for getting fired. And when you get fired, you can get like a black mark on your record, especially in the finance industry. Getting laid off is a benevolent term.

It is through really no fault of your own. Usually it's through company-wide layoffs, a change or a shutting down of a department and so forth. Yes, there are circumstances where people who are laid off might be because of underperformance, but please recognize that companies who wisely follow protocol basically have records, you have your six-month review, your quarterly review, whatever.

To be able to get laid off, you have to have a consistent record of underperformance. And so unless you're completely clueless, and this goes back to being aware, self-aware, you kind of know that the writing is on the wall. So in terms of feasibility, I think the feasibility is very high, and it's much higher than getting promoted to president of the company or whatever, because you cannot get fired without cause.

And if you start slacking off at work and all that, you will probably eventually get laid off, but that's kind of due to your lack of performance. But the idea is you can get laid off if you want to. I strongly believe that. I think there's probably an 80% chance that everybody can get laid off if they want to.

Whether they can get that amazing severance or all that other stuff, that's a different matter, and that takes much more negotiating and skill. - Let me ask you a question, interrupt you to ask the question. Do you believe that you can get laid off if you want to? Do you believe you can get laid off honorably if you want to?

For example, I'm not willing to pursue the strategy like slacking off. That goes against my moral code, and I'm not willing to do that. Do you believe that you can get laid off honorably if you want to, or only if you're willing to engage in some of those other tactics and techniques?

- Oh yeah, I mean, if you talk about honorably, it's talking about having a conversation, being proactive and talking about why you want to get laid off. And if you want to do it, quote, less honorably, then you can do what many, many, many, many employees do, and that is not put their full effort into their job while they're there.

I mean, it's so funny. I actually crave, I don't crave, but I like the Monday to Friday time period, because that's when the traffic on the financial samurai is the most. And why is that? Because everybody's slacking off at work. On Saturday and Sunday, the traffic dips by 20 to 30%, because people are enjoying their lives.

So I think the use of the word honors is a little tricky, because at the end of the day, the employer pays you because you provide more value than your salary and benefits. - But the reason I say honorably is, for example, if you're being paid on, every job would be different, but if you're being paid on time, which most of the highest earning professions are not being paid on time, but if you're being paid on time, if you steal time from your employer, you're stealing time.

And so you can't, I don't see that as being honorable to go in where I'm being paid for an hourly wage and now I'm gonna take and start stealing time from my employer by slacking off so that they'll fire me. That's different than many other circumstances, but I don't think it's wrong to use the word honorable.

Theft is theft, whether you're stealing time from your employer or stealing a stapler from the conference room. If you're being paid for your time, you need to be producing and working to the best of your capability during that time. - I think it's a gray area, 'cause anybody who's worked has seen people not get in at 7 a.m.

and work nonstop and take a 30 minute break. So yeah, it's a gray area. That's my opinion. You can do it honorably if you want. You can do it less honorably, but I strongly believe, unlike trying to become a managing director or a vice president of the department or whatever, it's much easier to get laid off than to ascend.

But the big irony is that there's so many, that's just not an irony. It's really logical, but there's so many books and articles and stuff on how to make money, how to get paid, and how to promote it. I really don't see anything on how to get laid off.

But the irony, I think, is that if you get laid off and engineer your severance, a severance package, a negotiated severance package, you could actually get paid way more than someone who just stayed there. And not only that, one of the things I talk about in my book is how you could actually double dip.

So most of the time, let's say you get laid off on June 1st, and because you have to get paid your Warnack pay, let's say it's two months in California, you'll get salaried for June and July. And let's say you get your severance too, let's say it's half your salary and your salary is 100,000, so it's another 50,000.

So you get two months of pay plus your $50,000 severance. But meanwhile, you don't even have to go to work. They don't want you to go to work. Actually, part of the deal is you don't come to work unless they agree to it. So from June to July, and actually six more months, 'cause your severance is equal to six months of your pay, you can either do nothing, go travel, start a business, do whatever, or you can actually find another job and earn double the money, which is something quite interesting that several of my clients have done.

- Indeed. You were answering a two-part question. One was feasibility and the second was timing when I interrupted you. What are your thoughts with regard to the amount of time necessary to engineer a layoff? - I think the minimal amount of time is probably one month. And a probably sweet spot is three to six months.

So during this time period, you need to be aware of your company's stance on hiring and laying people off and the whole business cycle. And during this time period, you need to actively be building the strongest relationships you can with your hiring manager and the HR department if there is one close by who's in your office.

So basically, I would say a sweet spot is probably three to six months. I started thinking about it about a year before I got laid off, and I really started thinking about it about three to four months after bonuses were paid. And I was thinking to myself, this is maybe not worth it anymore.

- One of the areas that I pay attention to and I think is helpful is if you can get the business cycle to work in your favor. And here we're talking about facing difficult times, so that's probably gonna lead to layoffs. That would be easier to get laid off when the company is doing layoffs than if the company is growing and hiring all over the place.

And as we record this here in August of 2016, I think that very possibly over the next upcoming years, we'll be facing a downturn and who knows, could be a significant downturn in the business cycle. Now that's purely my opinion and guess, take it for what it is. But in that context, I would expect to see a significant number of jobs lost.

I would expect to see significant numbers of layoffs as you go into recession, that's generally the trend. And depending on how long or deep the recession indicates, how long or deep the cuts are. And I think that recessions can be opportunities. They can be challenges, but they can also be opportunities where if you're looking for a good time to take a sabbatical and take time off and if you've got money and you don't need the income, then perhaps taking that time off during a recession is a really good way to do it.

And so I'd love for my listeners to be thinking about that because some of them have been wanting to do certain activities, want to take a couple of years and travel the world or to start a new business or start a hobby or spend time with aging parents, things like that.

So pretend for a moment that my guesses were accurate and I had listeners who were thinking, in the coming years, it'd be nice to get laid off in the next recession so that I can attend to these other areas. Give my listeners some practical steps, a checklist of sorts of some of the things that they can be doing proactively now so that they're first on the chopping block to get laid off with maximum benefit in coming changes in the business cycle, please.

- Sure. I guess step one is to calculate your net worth and calculate your cash flow and calculate how much you have in the bank in terms of living expenses. That's obvious. The more you have, the better it is. Step two, I think you should probably reach out to people who have been laid off, take them out for coffee or lunch and ask them in a, I guess, casual way, how has it been like since you were laid off and what type of benefits you got?

You need to understand what you're playing for. The way I found out was actually having a really good conversation with my HR manager who basically explained to me what the benefits were and what I could expect going forward. So once you know what you're playing for, then you can make even better calculations about your financial future.

The other step is to really develop strong relationships with your immediate manager. Bite your tongue, see how you can help out more, just be a good team player. People like to help people who they like. It's very simple. And again, I talk about in my book how it's really a relationship business.

The more you can get to know someone, the better and easier it is to tell someone your true thoughts and feelings and have them be accepted and have that someone understand and empathize and work towards helping you. Because again, nobody wants to have an employee who doesn't wanna be there.

And if you can help that person you're developing a good relationship with who has the power, make an easier decision come layoff time, then you're actually helping him or her as well as yourself. And also, it depends on what you wanna do, whether you wanna travel, start a business, take time off, or find another job.

You should be thinking, you should be having a test run on what it is you wanna do. So if you wanna travel or if you wanna relocate and live in Mexico, maybe the next vacation should be in Mexico for one week where you absolutely pretend you don't have a job and you're living in Mexico in some apartment you rent in obviously not the Four Seasons or whatever.

If you wanna start a business, throw up a website. Test out some ideas. Ask friends what they think. And ask strangers what they think even more because they'll probably be a little bit more honest. In my case, Financial Samurai was a labor of love where I was trying to make sense of the chaos during the financial crisis.

And I just wrote because it was my personal journal. I didn't really have a business plan. I just wrote, wrote, wrote, wrote, and tried to build a community. And then I realized, oh, you could actually make some money if you actually focus on the financial aspect of running a online media company.

But I had been testing for two and a half years before I actually pulled the trigger and negotiated my severance. So I think those are the things that you need to think about. Always think about the scenarios. What if it happens? What would you do if it happens? But before that happens, I read so many stories about people, I quit my job and I'm gonna be an entrepreneur.

But they've only been testing for like one month. And a lot of times people just end up going back to work. And I give them credit and I give them full props for having the confidence to just leave without a financial runway, without extensive testing and extensive trial period.

But I don't think that's the wise, fiscal way to go about things. People should really, really ask as many people as possible who've done it so they don't regret saying, I wish I knew then what I know now. - Yeah, no question. I've been laid off twice in my life.

The first time I'd worked at the job for about a week. And then after a week, we quickly realized that the job I thought I was hired to do and the job that I was actually doing were very different. And it was a kind of a mutual parting of ways where we realized we had accomplished a poor negotiation and it was not working out.

But the second job was I had been there for a couple of years and I was laid off out of the blue. It was a total surprise to me. And it wasn't due to non-performance. My evidence of that was that I had received glowing reviews from my superiors and my, what do they call it, the corporate world, 360 reviews and things like that.

And I had just received an 8% pay raise some few months earlier. And so I knew it wasn't for cause of my own personal performance. It was a company reorganization. And they decided to eliminate the middle tier of my job. The analyst position that I was in was being eliminated in favor of more entry level people and more senior people.

Because the job description in and of itself wasn't working out. And so me and all of my coworkers at the middle level were laid off. But it was a total surprise to me. And I was not aware. And it took me a while to figure out what was even happening in the meeting where I'm sitting there in the layoff meeting and I didn't know what was-- - The folks were dancing around 'cause it's tough to tell you.

- Yeah, and they're like, and it's that exact thing where they're trying to say it, but they're trying to use euphemisms and be polite, blah, blah, blah. And all of a sudden it dawns on you, wait a second, I'm being laid off right now. (laughing) But I was caught in that circumstance really flat footed.

And thankfully, and they gave me a couple months of severance and it was nice. Everything worked out fine. And that was my first time being laid off from a corporate job where I got those benefits. And they treated me fairly. I have no complaints. But I was caught flat footed.

And I didn't know what to negotiate. I didn't know how to negotiate. I didn't know what my rights were. I didn't know what any of those things. I was just completely unprepared. If you were seeking to prepare some of my listeners who could be in that situation and try to equip them with some knowledge of what their rights are, you talk about these things as being negotiable.

If one of my listeners tomorrow goes into their office and has a circumstance like mine where they realize, wait a second, I'm being laid off right now. What can they do to come out better on the other side of that meeting than they would otherwise? - Right, so one is to prepare by knowing what you're playing for.

And to know what you're playing for, there's precedence, right? In the law, in law of the land, you look at previous cases to set precedence for what you wanna argue. So to set precedence is to simply ask people who've been laid off before. To set precedence is to ask if you have a good relationship, which is what I want people to build better relationships internally.

To talk to HR, maybe, but be aware that if you talk to HR, HR has a high likelihood of telling their manager because HR is actually there to protect the corporation first and then its employees. So remember that. HR is there to protect liability risks for the corporation and then to solve conflict internally.

I recommend everybody read their employee handbook. I think the majority of people do not do that. Man, when I got my employee handbook, it was thick. And through that employee handbook, I realized, hey, I didn't realize this, but the company pays for my MBA if I get in. And if I get a B or above, they'll pay 100% of it.

And so guess what? That's exactly what I did. I went to get my MBA at Berkeley and they paid for it. And nobody else knew that. They're like, what? They pay $28,000 a year to get your MBA? I can't believe it. I'm gonna do the same thing too. I told everybody to read the handbook and they said, well, gosh, be darned.

And several other people got their MBA as well. So read your employee handbook. It is by law that you as an employee need to have all your rights laid out for you. Whether you read them or not is a different matter, but you will find everything from 401k contribution matching to continuing education to COBRA, to short-term disability to long-term disability, and all that good stuff.

These are the things you will understand what you're playing for. And then finally, one thing I wanna let you know, and I want readers to realize, is that there's a very big difference between Warren Act pay and severance. A lot of people who actually are in your situation, like two years, one to, let's say one to three year, they get laid off and they say they got a severance of two months of pay.

The reality is, is that wasn't a severance. That was mandatory by law, Warren Act pay. The severance is on top of that Warren Act pay. So please be aware of that. - Interesting, that's a good point. I have no idea if I received Warren Act pay or severance pay, I have no idea.

- Well, what did you, are you free to say what you got, like in terms of-- - Yeah, just two months, I just got two months salary. They continued to pay my salary. They didn't pay it out in a lump sum, they just continued to pay my salary on the standard schedule for the two months following my last day of work.

- And following your last day, right? So you didn't go in while you were getting paid the two months. - No, I walked out, after that meeting, I went back to my desk and took my things out to the car and that was it. - Right, so that is Warren Act pay.

- Interesting. - Yeah, that's not a severance, that's Warren Act pay, which is fine, at least you got two months, right? - Sure, sure. - That's a good running away. - Yeah, I got on an airplane and went to Columbia. - There you go. So I think that's the power of my book, is actually educating people on what they're fighting for and to not really be confused with all these words and these rules and all that.

The Warren Act pay is different from severance pay and let me tell you an example. I tried really hard with one client to get a severance, but she couldn't get a severance, but she was miserable at her job, she was there for 10 years. So what we did was, we had a really, she had a come to Jesus moment, I said, "Hey, look, are you serious "about wanting to move on?" She said, "Yes, I am.

"I cry every week at my job, I hate it, "this is pathetic." And I gave her the confidence to have that discussion with her manager and this was in August. And the manager was surprised, generally they are surprised, but empathetic 'cause they had a good relationship and he said, "How about this?

"Can you come on board, can you work until January?" So this is August, right? So August, September, October, November, so it was four or five months, right? And look, we'll still pay you 100% of your salary, but how about just come in three days a week? So really, that's kind of, if you do the math, three days, but you're getting paid for five days, you just got a huge raise.

And then she said, "You know what? "It's not gonna really fly, "I'd rather just have my severance "just like the people who got laid off "due to a reorg a year ago did." And I think they got like one or two weeks per year work. And so they had talks with the bigger boss and they're like, "No, no, no, no, no, we can't do this "'cause you're a good employee." And then she said, "How about this?

"How about this? "Instead of three days a week, "I'll come in for the next five months, "I'll come in two days a week." (laughing) So they said, "Okay, two days a week, "that's better than nothing. "You're a valued employee, we love you, you're a manager." So she came in two days a week.

She decided Monday to Wednesday, and sometimes she decided Monday to Tuesday so she can have a long weekend to do whatever. And they paid her full benefits. So if you're working two days a week, but you get paid five days, so you're kind of like getting 150% raise. And then still she was so happy 'cause she felt like she was winning 'cause she was proactive.

And she didn't get that severance that she wanted, which was like 20 to 30 weeks. But for five months, she was able to have this carefree lifestyle where she made max money. And then they gave her the two months of Warn Act pay. And here's the kicker. She did so good in the transition that they hired her back as a consultant 10 months later.

(laughing) For 35% more. - Do you remember what her salary was, or ballpark what her salary was when she was working there as an employee? - Yeah, so she was making like 125 base, and then she had like maybe $15,000 a year in bonus. - Okay. - So now her run rate is like 170,000.

- Okay, so I wanna put some numbers to what you just said and point out for my audience to learn the lesson that in negotiations, when you have a negotiation like that, you have a much bigger opportunity to make a huge financial impact than you do at many other times, which is why you gotta take negotiations seriously, whether they're hiring negotiations or firing negotiations.

- Or buying a house. - Right. - Or buying a car, anything, negotiation is key. - Anything, so let's put some numbers to it. So just focusing on that 20% difference, 'cause they offered her three days a week versus two days a week. If she was making $140,000 a year with 125 plus 15 of bonus, that comes out to $11,666 a month.

And then if we were gonna calculate five months of that, that comes out to $58,333 total. And her difference between two days a week and three days a week is a 20% difference of total work days, meaning between two days a week and three days a week versus five days a week.

So let's just take 20% of that $58,000 number. That's an $11,666 basically free money just by pushing back and saying, well, I'm not so sure. That's an extra $11,600 in her pocket by just pushing back and getting it down to two days instead of three days. - Yeah, and I mean, if you wanna say she's getting paid five days for only working two days, I mean, the math is even more.

It's like she's getting more and more and more, and then she got the two months of salary, which is another 20-something thousand, and then she got all her vacation days paid, which was like a month's worth. Oh, one tip I need readers to realize, and this was a mistake I made, was that I took a five-day Hawaiian vacation during my sevens negotiation period, and I made a mistake.

I shouldn't have done that. Instead, I should have just taken sick days. I think we have something like seven to nine sick days a year, and I never took them. Well, no, no, sorry. I took one or two days a year maybe on average for my 11 years at that place.

Because I didn't take my sick days, I didn't get five days worth of vacation pay, and each day of vacation pay is equal to one day of your salary, something to be aware of. But that might cross the gray area, 'cause you're not sick if you're in Hawaii. - Right, right.

One more question on this layoff, and then I wanna come back to your financial independence story, and we'll be done. In the corporate environment, these things are more standardized. You have a handbook that's gonna lay these things out, and the farther you go up the chain, in terms of if you're the CEO of a large Fortune 500 company and they're trying to fire you, your lawyers and their lawyers are gonna be negotiating over your severance package for a long time, 'cause it's all pre-negotiated, and we're talking millions of dollars of severance package for them to get you out of there.

- It's disgusting and crazy. - It's amazing. And so in the corporate environment, things are very, very structured, and I think you have, my opinion, feel free to disagree in a moment, my opinion is you have a bit of an advantage there, because when the manager who cares about you, or the human resources representative who cares about you is negotiating with you, it's not their money, they're the steward of it, but it's not their money, so they're more likely to say, okay, I wanna help you out, we'll give you a little bit extra here, because it's the company's money.

- And they'll get an upgrade for someone who hopefully will wanna be there. - Right, right. Now, when you're in the small business scenario, and that's where the majority of Americans work, is with small businesses, where the business owner is involved in the day-to-day operations of the company, most likely, if you're getting laid off, you're gonna be being laid off by the business owner.

And is there a difference of negotiation here, of the strengths that you have, and the weaknesses that you have, and if so, or if not, but if so, how would you approach it differently if you're working in a small business with eight employees versus 800? - I would approach it quite similarly.

Small business is much more intimate, and hopefully everybody has a better relationship with their managers and bosses and owners in that case. So, probably what you have to play for will be less, and it's all relative to size of that small business versus a large corporation. And small businesses aren't subject to the Warren Act mandatory pay, but they operate under similar guidelines.

It's important to recognize that, actually, a small business might care about its reputation relatively more than a big business, because a bad reputation, let's say a bad Yelp rating, or whatever, might really hurt that small business. And so, what they want to do is treat you as a good employee if you treat them as good employers.

And they want you to move on in a happy manner. Every single company is terrified of employee lawsuits, discrimination suits, whatever. They have it all the time. This costs legal fees, time, money, stress. These are things that small businesses do not have time for and probably can't afford as much as a large corporation.

So, the way to approach a small business is to do the best you can and to have the most honest conversations you can about why you want to move on. And so, the example I gave with my friend who negotiated two days of work a week for five months, and then the two months of Warnack, she didn't get a severance.

She worked at somewhat of a small business, it's a private business, but it's not that small, but it's small, blur, it's in those big corporations. And they work something out like that, where, okay, transition period, we need someone, we need your help, we've got clients to deal with, we don't want to hurt the business, we'll still pay you this, but here, you can have less time.

So, small businesses actually can provide you even more flexibility, right? So, it's all about time and money. They might not be able to give you as much money, but they might be able to give you more time. And I actually value time much more, much, much greater the older I get.

- Yeah, that's a fundamental basis of negotiation is you always want to negotiate separately different terms of the contract. And what most beginning negotiators, one mistake they often make is by spending all the time focusing on money, but money and terms are two very different things. And many times in various negotiations, if you can negotiate more favorable terms, that could be much more valuable to you than money, than the specific dollar figure.

And here, when you talk about time, we're just talking about an additional term of the agreement that's not just the dollar figure. Go ahead. - I was just saying, so, yeah, that's exactly right. And the time that you negotiate or the terms, you need to know what's important to you.

And if you need time to go see the world, awesome. If you need time to go find another job or spend time with your family, great. Figure out what that term is most valuable to you. I'm in the world where it's very trendy and popular to quit your job, start an online business, travel the world, all that stuff.

But what people don't read about and hear about are the people who do all that stuff on a whim and who come back and kind of regret their financial decisions and their spontaneity. There's no articles really about that. But I've seen that many, many times. And hey, the good thing is that a lot of people kind of just end up landing back on their feet.

They might have a huge hole in their financial well-being because of their spontaneity. But I really want people to think about never quitting, getting laid. Never quitting, getting laid. And getting to some agreeable terms that can be a positive for both sides. - So that brings us as an ideal transition to the last thing I wanted just to mention to you quickly here, which is about your personal path.

You mentioned that since about 2012, you've considered yourself to be, excuse me, yeah, about 11 or 12, you considered yourself to be basically financially independent. So that's going on five plus years now of financial independence and you've been building Financial Samurai and you've had various other consulting and employment opportunities.

I wanna ask you, many of my listeners are working towards a lifestyle like you've built and achieved. What is the best thing that you are so grateful for about your current lifestyle? - The best thing, the freedom to choose. The freedom to choose is all someone ever wants. Whether it is to choose your own mistakes or to choose your own victories.

It is just unbelievable to be able to make choices based on your own core beliefs. And it's also a thing where you don't have to hang out with people or do things because you're beholden to anybody because of money. It actually feels terrible now that I look back upon it that you bite your tongue, don't speak up for things you believe in because you're afraid that if you piss off someone who decides your career, paycheck, livelihood, that they'll screw you.

So achieve financial independence first for yourself so you can have the freedom to choose. And then once you have the freedom to choose and you have this money coming in that will help you live a more free life, then you can use that time and money to help other people.

Whether it's through writing a blog for free to just teach people concepts and pitfalls that you've gone through so they never ask if I knew then what I know now. And I think about it from a family perspective. If you're financially independent, you can spend so much time with your children, your spouse, things such as stress at home because one parent is always stressed at work in a way and one parent is staying home to take care of the kids.

That stuff kind of really dissipates when you have that financial freedom. So one of the things I ask my readers is, is not wanting to be rich, is not wanting to be financially free greedy? And that's something that people have discussed where it's like hey, the sooner you get to financial independence, the sooner you can help other people and that's kind of the way that I've been thinking about things for the past four or five years.

- It's funny you talk about freedom. Every time I get a nasty review on my podcast, I just think to myself, I appreciate, I think to the reviewer, I appreciate the comments, usually 'cause I say all kinds of things that make people angry with me. And I always think, okay, I appreciate the comment, but you have no idea what I gave up in order to achieve the independence to be able to speak my mind no matter what it is without worrying about somebody else's brand, without worrying about my job, et cetera.

If you think that I'm gonna go back to having to think about, well, how is this gonna position my firm, blah, blah, blah, and do I need to protect this person's reputation, et cetera, if you think I'm gonna go back to that just to meet your idea of what I should or shouldn't say, no chance.

The freedom to live the way that you want to live is incredibly, incredibly valuable. - Sam, what is the thing that when you were working, hustling 12-hour days, saving like crazy, that you just thought, man, if someday, if someday I can quit, it's gonna be just so awesome because I can do X.

And then you achieved it after a while and you thought, you know, I was really excited about this, but frankly, it's not quite as good as I thought. What were the things that you thought were gonna be great that in hindsight now haven't turned out to be quite so great as you thought?

- I think the biggest downside to early retirement, financial independence, whatever, is boredom. Because especially the younger you are, I would always kind of wake up by 6 a.m. every morning because the markets open at 6.30 a.m. And I was trained to do that biologically for the past 11 years.

So I'd wake up at 6 a.m., brush my teeth, drink some water, and then maybe do some writing and work, and I'd be done by like 9 a.m. almost always, maybe 10 a.m. And then I'd wanna like go out and play. So I would call my friends, and there were no friends who could go out and play at 10 a.m.

or 11 a.m., so I had to figure out new people to hang out with. I was like a tennis bum in the park where I would just hang out with people who were traditionally retired or outside my demographic or whatever. So it can get lonely. It can get boring when you have all this free time.

So that is something that I was surprised about because I'm kind of masochistic in the way I think. Like I believe work makes vacations a little bit better. And after one and a half years of just doing my own thing, I decided to consult for one of these FinTech startups here in San Francisco, there are many, and to work just 20 to 25 hours a week.

And I found a lot of great things going on. You know, I was back in the environment. I shot the shit with people. You know, I was getting paid. I was learning new things. It was really, really fun. So I think a lot of people have to guard against, I guess, boredom, but I think everything is pretty rational and logical.

If you're bored, you're gonna find something to do. And if you're unhappy with work, you're gonna find some way to get out. So that was the biggest surprise. But the upsides are way better, way, way, way, way better. I mean, I'm sitting here in Lake Tahoe right now talking to you and I'm gonna go jump in the pool and go in the hot tub.

I love that, I mean, that's awesome. And I never take that for granted. So it's worth it. It's worth the struggle. It's worth the sacrifice. It's worth not buying a stupid car. It's worth not living in a fancy house so that you have, you know, sacrifice a little bit and live like a king or queen forever.

Why not? - Sam, thanks for coming on. Tell us about your website where listeners can buy the book that we've been discussing, How to Engineer a Layoff, and any follow-up calls to action that you'd like to make for my audience. - So I write at financialsamurai.com. And if you wanna buy the book, it's in my menu bar at the top right.

It's called Freedom Book. And you can read about it. And my site is really about achieving financial independence sooner rather than later. You can see a lot of the top posts on the right-hand side column if you scroll down. And it really talks about everything from your career to real estate investing, to stock market investing, to asset allocation, to economic terms, to early retirement.

And it also tries to motivate and challenge you to get better financially so that ultimately you have the money to be free and also to be happy. It's just about happiness at the end of the day. And so if you wanna be happy and if you wanna achieve financial freedom sooner, then check out financialsamurai.com.

- And I'll finish just with another endorsement of it that I've probably been reading your site. I don't read every day, but I've read your site off and on since a year or two after you started probably. And I've always appreciated the experience that you bring to it. So many of my listeners appreciate Radical Personal Finance because of my experience in formal financial planning.

It brings a different tone and flavor to the content than a podcast host who doesn't have background in formal planning. And I'll say the same thing for you is that your experience in financial planning and investment management, excuse me, brings a different level of analysis and different level of analysis and content to your writing than many other financial blogs.

And so if my listeners appreciate the ideas that I bring from financial planning, you'll appreciate the ideas that Sam brings to his writing from financial services. So Sam, thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. - All right, thanks Josh. And thanks guys. I'll see you guys on Financial Samurai.

- Hey Radicals, it's me again. Just real quick, after the interview with Sam because his book is an e-book, I went and asked him if he offered an affiliate program for his book. An affiliate program is where you sign up through some kind of system and you become an affiliate where you get to earn a commission when you promote other people's products.

And he does have that program. So I went ahead and signed up for it. If you're interested in purchasing Sam's book, How to Engineer Your Layoff, Negotiate a Severance and Be Free, I would appreciate it if you consider using the affiliate link that I've established. The link that I'll put in the show notes for today's show, which pull up on your phone or on the website at radicalpersonalfinance.com.

That link will take you through my affiliate link. And if you buy the book through that link, then I'll receive a commission for that. Thank you very much. If you're just thinking of this later, just remember and use the link radicalpersonalfinance.com/layoff. radicalpersonalfinance.com/layoff. and that link will pass you through my affiliate link.

Thank you so much.